I sat in the front of their yellow station wagon on the bench seat, between my dad, who was driving, and my mom, who was in the passenger seat, on the way home from the hospital. I was beaming. After everything we had been through, I had reason to believe that we were going to be a real family.
We were three blocks down the road from the hospital when Mom asked me to hold one end of a rubber tie-off while she shot up right there in the front seat.
That was the first and last time I allowed myself real hope for a family…until Nan.
Nan...
I let out a scream that could have woken the dead, igniting the fire of pain within every cell of my body. I didn’t care. Pain was what I was used to. Hurt and disappointment and fucked-up-ness were normal for me. I screamed louder. Something in my throat felt like it popped, and blood rose in my throat and into my mouth. I sank down onto the floor of the bathroom and curled up into fetal position. The blood, too much to swallow, flowed out from my mouth and onto the tile, creating rivers of red in the grout. I wasn’t throwing it up. I was just releasing it.
Dragging myself up onto the toilet wasn’t an option. I had no strength left. Urine came out of me in burning waves of agony, causing me to see what looked like TV snow behind my eyelids.
My life was my pain, and there was so much more to come.
It was then that I made the decision. A decision I always knew I might have to make at some point in my life, but had somehow doubted I’d ever have the strength to actually carry out.
Owen was going to die.
When Jake returned, I was going to tell him what happened. Every explicit, gory detail. I was going to awaken the monster within.
It wasn’t like I could call the authorities. In Coral Pines, Owen’s family was the authorities. The mayor, the DA, the county judge, the lowly sheriff— all were Fletchers, born and bred. They wouldn’t help me.
Jake would.
My breath quickened – not from the pain anymore, but from the dark satisfaction of my decision. A small maniacal laugh escaped my lips, and I clutched my ribs that felt like they were being broken again and again with each sound I made.
I let it all come.
Jake is going to kill Owen.
In between the throws of unbearable agony and the fits of insane laughter, the thought was comforting. It made the pain almost bearable.
Almost.
CHAPTER SEVENTEEN
IT WAS TEN O’CLOCK P.M., and all of the lights inside Coral Pines High School were off. I didn’t want to turn any of them on for fear of drawing attention to myself. What I was there to do didn’t require light, anyway. The red glow from the exit signs above every doorway and my tiny keychain flashlight allowed me to see just enough for to find my way through.
Even in the absence of students, the school still smelled the same as it always did: like chemicals from the dry erase markers mixed with stale air and a faint smell of body odor wafting from the gym. It would be another couple of months before the students returned to school. I felt as if I’d hear the bell ring at any moment, the sounds of the students’ laughter echoing through the halls as they spilled from their classrooms, slamming lockers and shouting over one another.
I navigated my way down one dark hall and then another. Most of my soreness was now replaced with a constant state of ‘uncomfortable’ that I felt in each and every step.
The towering locker system looked very much like rows of silent soldiers lining every open section of wall from the floor to the ceiling. When I reached the closet-turned-darkroom that Mr. Johnson had built for his photography class, I used the knife from my boot to flip the flimsy latch.
When I was sure the room was light-tight, I turned on the safe light and went to work pulling the negatives from my camera and filling the trays with processing chemicals. It took longer than I thought, but when I was done, twelve black-and-white photos hung on clothespins on the drying line across the room, each one a different angle of the same subject.
Me.
Looking at them made me feel as if not even a second had passed, let alone a few weeks. I was right there again. I closed my eyes to fight off the intruding memories, but they wouldn’t relent.
Again, I felt every blow, every bit of force he used when he pushed himself into me. I felt a sudden panic rise in my chest that radiated down my body to my toes.
I was afraid to leave the apartment in those first couple of weeks, not just because Owen was out there somewhere, but because I didn’t want anyone to see me. I’d called Reggie and told him I was violently ill and didn’t want to get the rest of the guys sick so he slipped invoices and receipts under the door of the apartment for me to organize at home until the bruising on my face faded.
When I did make it back to work, I’d heard that all the Fletchers were spending the rest of the summer at their cabin up in Jackson Hole.
Owen would be gone until Jake came back.